Sunday, September 27, 2015

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS - #200

How long before we get a modern retelling of The Honeymoon Killers based off Tinder? Though I’d put money that
Law & Order: SVU has already done it, the dating app and
similarly focused websites are the digital equivalent of the “Lonely Hearts” services
that gave hustler Ray Fernandez and his lover Martha Beck a handy list of
potential victims for Ray’s gigolo con, a scheme that eventually gave way to
murder.

It’s this true crime tale that inspired The
Honeymoon Killers, a 1969 indie written and directed by Leonard
Kastle. It was his first and only feature.

In the movie, Tony Lo Bianco plays Ray, a Spanish playboy
who woos desperate women by mail, luring them into trysts and sometimes
marriage in an effort to trick them into giving him money. When he targets Martha
(Shirley Stoler), an overweight nurse with a bad attitude, he misses the
mark--she doesn’t have any money--but still gets more than he bargained for.
Martha falls hard for Ray, so much so that she threatens suicide if he won’t
come back to her and doesn’t even bat an eyelash when he tells her the truth
about his lifestyle. He likely hoped that it would scare her off, but it only
ties her to him more. Martha becomes Ray’s partner, posing as his overbearing
sister and tagging along for his seductions. This turns out to be as bad an
idea as it sounds. Martha is jealous of Ray showing affection to other women,
and she’d rather sink the con than let him sleep with the targets. Her
insecurity causes an escalation in their criminal behavior, with a few of the
hook-ups ultimately ending in murder.

The Honeymoon Killers adheres to a rough
aesthetic. Scenes are short and choppy, the acting has a stiff naturalism, and
Kastle’s documentary-like film style is more functional than facile. Whether
this is by design or a necessity of budget is probably something that can be
argued. For a musical composer, Kastle lacks rhythm when it comes to film directing.
Still, one can draw an interesting line between The Honeymoon
Killers and, decades later, the Jason Bourne movies. They share a
director of photography in Oliver Wood. This was only his second film, but
there is a level of groundwork being done here for that on-the-street,
in-the-moment visual style that helped make those Matt Damon vehicles so
compelling. The immediacy can be unsettling. As the audience, we are, in
essence, a silent participant, sitting in the room with the deadly lovers as
they prepare to pull off their terrible deeds. As bystanders, there are times
when we could almost reach out or speak up and stop Martha’s anger from
bubbling over.

Because it’s a slow bubbling. The momentum wouldn’t be hard
to reverse. Unlike the film noirs the movie is often compared to, there is no
sense of the inevitable in The Honeymoon Killers. Fate can
be changed. One victim escapes when she smartly realizes that there is
something wrong about the brother/sister relationship of her would-be suitor
and his alleged sibling. (It’s one of Wood’s artier shots, with the spurned
lonely heart walking away in the foreground, her back to the kissing pair on
the beach down below, almost like a third wheel in the classic Burt
Lancaster/Deborah Karr mashing in From Here to Eternity.)
When the first intentional murder finally does happen, it’s to the movie’s most
annoying character, a nattering cheapskate played by Mary Jane Higby. Her
persistent chatter almost makes us beg to see her killed, and Kastle strangely withholds
the cathartic pleasure by making the murder clumsy and uncomfortable. He’s
denying us any vicarious release--not unlike the way Martha keeps preventing
Ray from realizing his sexual conquests.

Despite straddling the line between old Hollywood and the
innovation of 1970s American filmmaking, The Honeymoon
Killers doesn’t overdo it when it comes to taking advantage of the
broadened standards. Most of its salaciousness is left to the imagination, more
whispered than shouted, in keeping with the gossipy scandal-sheet sensation
that the real Ray and Martha caused. Even their lovemaking is mostly implied,
despite reports of the pair’s voracious appetites. Again, it’s the uglier
details that Kastle spends his freedoms on. Like the pregnancy of Martha’s last
victim and Martha’s cold solution for the problem.

Shirley Stoler is by far the strongest performer in the
film, and of the two main characters, Martha is also the most interesting.
Ray’s pathology is rather predictable and all on the surface; Martha is the
true conniver. She’ll do anything to keep Ray. Desperation makes her inventive.
Like everyone else in this movie, however, Martha is consistently denied
satisfaction. It’s what compels her to kill, and ultimately what pushes her
over the edge and inspires her to bring everything crashing down. It’s perfect,
then, that the last shot of The Honeymoon Killers, a
graceful pull out,features Martha
alone, with Ray as a distant correspondent, the two right back where they
began.

Though Criterion released The Honeymoon
Killers in 2003, the new edition boasts a considerable picture
upgrade, as well as some small additions to the DVD package. Namely, some added
interviews with Tony Lo Bianco, actress Marilyn Chris (she played Martha and
Ray’s first victim), and editor Stan Warnow. Old extras are carried over to
this edition, minus the text biographies and press book reproduction.

The above screengrabs are taken from the 2003 standard-definition release.The movie was provided by Criterion for review.

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About Me

Author of prose novels and comic books like Cut My Hair, It Girl & the Atomics, You Have Killed Me, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. Jamie's most recent novel is the serialized book Bobby Pins and Mary Janes, and his most recent graphic novels are the sci-fi romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Madame Frankenstein with Megan Levens; and the weird crime comic Archer Coe & the Thousand Natural Shocks with Dan Christensen. He also co-created Lady Killer with Joëlle Jones.